Depending on who you listen to, the Internet is either very good or very bad for reading. In the USA, Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad is good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter recently took the National Endowment for the Arts to task for its downbeat assessment of reading in the US in its report To Read or Not to Read.[1] Are teenagers reading less or just different stuff online? Certainly the UK National Year of Reading 2008 report Read Up: Fed Up: Exploring Teenage Reading Habits in the UK Today found the top four ‘most loved reads’ were all online, with computer-game cheats at number three.[2] But is reading online the same as reading a book? The CIBER report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (11 January 2008)[3] cites evidence of new ways of reading emerging online: students getting better at parallel processing (multi-tasking) but worse at sequential processing (reading and evaluating stuff). It talks about the development of power browsing, a hypertextual form of reading, characterized by shallow ‘flicking’ behaviour. ‘Power browsing and viewing appear to be the norm for all. The popularity of abstracts among older researchers rather gives the game away. Society is dumbing down.’[4]
Is a new form of reading emerging online? And if there is, how effective will ‘power browsing’ be for students grappling with complex texts and documentary-based study? We all employ different reading strategies for different things. We ‘scan’ the Yellow Pages for information, we ‘skim’ the newspaper, we practice ‘intensive reading’ prior to a test. But the ability to choose and switch reading strategies ‘distinguishes effective from less effective readers.’[5] Wray and Lewis have highlighted the need for primary school teachers to help children read different kinds of material in different kinds of ways. Is the Internet making it imperative that we think in these terms at university?
Given all this, what of the headlong rush to shift library resources online in the form of e-books? Has anyone ever read an entire monograph online? Maybe the e-book reader revolution is just around the corner, e-paper delivering the satisfying ‘book like‘ experience?[6] Xerox PARC research teams have developed speed readers incorporating dynamic text, its flow rate controlled by the reader, the text morphable onto any surface.[7] Welcome to the world of WalkIn Comix.
WalkIn Comix is a graphic novel you can literally walk into -- it's printed on the walls, floor, and ceiling of a small set of labyrinthine rooms we built at the Tech. Talk about getting immersed in a book...
The story tells the adventures of five teenagers who literally get lost in a world of text and can only find their way out by learning to read it. The exhibit's maze-like structure reflects the story's twists and turns.
Does this level of interactivity add to the experience of reading? Or does hypertextuality and dynamic text do something fundamental to reading that means we should resist the rush to digital?
Given that there is evidence that reading is shifting online and away from books in secondary cohorts, should we be encouraging reading at university with book and journal clubs? Can we make reading more interesting? Is the privatized notion that reading is something you do on your own, in your head, just historically contingent? The collective reading of newspapers, political, satirical and philosophical texts in coffee houses and salons was at the core of the European Enlightenment. Do we need to recover some sense of reading as an exciting and social activity?
[1] Johnson, Steven, ‘Dawn of the digital natives’, The Guardian, Thursday 7 February 2008, Technology Guardian 1-2.
Iyengar, Sunil & Bauerlein, mark, ‘Response: There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading’, The Guardian, Wednesday 20 February 2008, 31.
[2] Brown, Mark, ‘Celebrity scandal and Anne frank: the reading diary of British teenagers’, The Guardian, Thursday 27 March 2008, 11.
[3] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/ciber/downloads/ggexecutive.pdf Accessed 20.03.08
[4] Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (11 January 2008) 19
[5] Wray, David & Lewis, Maureen, ‘Extending interactions with non-fiction texts: An exit into understanding’, http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/D.J.Wray/exel/exit.html Accessed 17 April 2008
[6] http://www.tfot.info/articles/1013/cybook-gen3-e-book-review.html Accessed 5 may 2008
http://www.tfot.info/articles/1000/the-future-of-electronic-paper.html Accessed 5 May 2008
[7] Back, M., Cohen, J., Harrison, S. & Minneman, S., ‘Speed Reader: an experiment in the future of reading’, Computers & Graphics, Vol. 26, Issue 4, August 2002, 623-627.
5 comments:
I'm not sure about reading skillz, but online gaming (WOW) is probably enhancing the typing abilities of millions of teenagers.
I wonder if people are trying to justify online reading to be 'down with the kids'. Surely reading someone's Facebook or Myspace page is no replacement for reading an actual book.
Social webpages are littered with the same stock phrases or words over and over again. Mostly consisting of leetspeak. Lolz, pwned etc.
Myspace and Facebook are a curse on children, and represent the modern equivalent of bus shelter graffiti.
Reading a book can be hard and involving, which is what it's all about. You don't improve unless there's some element of struggle. I think people should stop listening to teenagers who will obviously want to take the easier option. Plus it doesn't help that the guardian makes out kids are some kind of cyberlords, and people who don't get this are just old fashioned.
I do think there's something to be said for educators creating 'social networking' spaces and opportunities related to books. Actually, it seems a potentially great environment for encouraging people to share ideas and opinions about exactly the same sorts of things that are discussed within the classroom. Why not?
Jane
It depends what level you are talking about I suppose. Anything below university level, and you are reduced to inane jabber.
I suppose there is one way to check if social learning is actually working. Have a look at the use of WebCT. How many active discussions are occuring on there?
I think, after the debate today, that it's important not to get carried away with 'digital literacy' - especially considering UCLan's student demographic (40 per cent mature etc).
At the Students' Union we're working on having our content available through as many different channels/platforms as possible. You can't stop doing what you're already doing, but at the same time you've got to be breaking new ground to deliver services etc.
There's also a question of cost, you're delivering what you've always delivered and yet delivering new content as well - but incurring the extra costs, and what chance of increased revenue?
Can I just make a point about the student demographic, 40% mature etc.? I'm not sure where this comes from (though I don't challenge it) but I think there are a lot of courses that doesn't apply to: mine, in TV & media for instance, is almost entirely under-23s, so debate over how to communicate effectively with that generation is crucial.
As an example, my students use Facebook groups to co-ordinate their TV production activities, and it seems to be an effective way of sharing information (and also keeping track of who is not checking in?). Thus far I've not asked to join any of these groups so that I can check what's going on ... I can't make up my mind whether that would be a good idea or not?
(I'm going off now to explore other areas of the blog before I rejoin this debate....)
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